Author: Darrell Williams

Teddy Williams will be entering his third season with the Carolina Panthers, hoping to regain his roster spot after his 2016 season was ended early by an injury.

After playing in 16 games for the Panthers in 2015, Williams was left off the active roster in three of Carolina’s first four games in 2016. However, the poor performance of the cornerbacks ahead of him gave Williams a chance to get back into the picture in Week 5, and he had the best game of his career the very next week, recording his first career interception and six tackles.

Williams hasn’t seen the field since that day, leaving practice the following week with a knee injury and eventually being placed on injured reserve for the remainder of the season.

TEDDY WILLIAMS

Team: Carolina Panthers

Position: Cornerback

Experience: 5 years

Prior to last season, Williams was used almost exclusively on special teams, where the former All-American sprinter was able to leverage his speed into regular playing time as a gunner on punts and kickoffs.

All reports indicate that Williams is now fully recovered from the injury that ended his season last year, but we’ll have to wait and see if he still has the speed and explosiveness that helped him break into the NFL in the first place.

CAROLINA PANTHERS CORNERBACK DEPTH

James Bradberry, 1 year experience

Daryl Worley, 1 year experience

Captain Munnerlyn, 8 years experience (injured)

Corn Elder, Rookie (Drafted, 5th round) (injured)

Cole Luke, Rookie (Undrafted)

Teddy Williams, 5 years experience

Jeff Richards, Rookie (AFL & CFL experience)

Zach Sanchez, 1 year experience

Devonte Johnson, 1 year practice squad experience

Bradberry, Worley and Munnerlyn have the starting outside corner and nickel spots all but locked up, but the competition behind them is wide open.

Carolina will likely only retain two or three backup cornerbacks out of the six that are currently on the 90-man roster.

Williams made some impressive plays during OTAs and briefly filled in for an injured Bradberry on the first team. However, he seems to have cooled down in recent weeks, leaving room for some of the younger guys to surpass him on the depth chart.

Corn Elder has managed to turn some heads in training camp and may have been the top choice as the backup outside corner, but a patella stress fracture will keep him out for at least a month.

Munnerlyn has also been sidelined recently, giving undrafted free agent Cole Luke a chance to cement himself as second-choice nickel.

As long as Williams doesn’t have any lingering issues from his injury, his utility on special teams should help give him the edge if none of the newcomers can impress enough in preseason to take the spot away from him.

Odds to make 53-man roster: 75%

The Panthers kick off week 1 of the NFL’s preseason slate tonight against Houston, airing live on NFL Network, followed by another chance to see Williams in action on national TV next week against Tennessee.

Jordan Moore has had quite the journey to the NFL. After a lackluster three years at TCU, Moore transferred to LSU and joined their track and field program, winning SEC titles in both the 60-meter and 110-meter hurdle events.

As a graduate transfer, Moore switched his allegiance back to the gridiron and followed Frank Wilson from LSU to UTSA, immediately climbing the depth chart to become the Roadrunners starting strong safety and a frequent contributor on special teams, finishing the year as an All-C-USA Honorable Mention selection.

Moore received interest from a handful of NFL teams in the spring and eventually signed with his hometown Atlanta Falcons as an undrafted free agent on April 30.

ATLANTA FALCONS STRONG SAFETY DEPTH

The Falcons have a clear #1 strong safety in 2016 first-rounder Keanu Neal, but the backup spot is up for grabs heading into preseason.

Moore’s stiffest competition will likely come from second-year player Sharrod Neasman, who spent part of last year on the practice squad before being called up to the active roster and being used sparingly, to the tune of 21 defensive snaps and 41 special teams, all in the final three weeks of the season.

Atlanta was clearly looking for some competition for Neasman in the offseason, signing three undrafted free agents, including Georgia standout Quincy Mauger.

With his combination of physicality and speed, Moore could prove to be a valuable contributor on special teams, and considering how little the #2 strong safety was called upon last season, the Falcons may just be looking for a guy like Moore as primarily a special teamer who can also fill in at strong safety in a pinch.

Odds to make 53-man roster: 40%

Jordan Moore and the Falcons will be in action this Thursday night as they travel to Miami to face the Dolphins, before heading to Pittsburgh for a live NFL Network game in Week 2.

DAVID MORGAN II

TE – Minnesota Vikings – UTSA ’11-’15

For the first time in his NFL career, David Morgan hauled in a pass from Sam Bradford midway through the second quarter of the Vikings’ Christmas Eve game against Green Bay, gaining four yards before being tackled by Ha Ha Clinton-Dix. It was the rookie’s only target of the game.

Morgan also returned his second kickoff of the season, this one for 11 yards before being tackled by Jordan Tripp, bringing his career total up to 29 yards.

Here is an updated list of every yard gained in the NFL by UTSA alumni:

10/27/2013 – Teddy Williams 51-yard reception (ARI vs ATL)

10/16/2016 – Teddy Williams 19-yard interception return (CAR @ NO)

12/11/2016 – David Morgan 18-yard kickoff return (MIN @ JAX)

12/24/2016 – David Morgan 4-yard reception (MIN @ GB)

12/24/2016 – David Morgan 11-yard kickoff return (MIN @ GB)

BRIAN PRICE

DT – Green Bay Packers – UTSA ’13-’15

Despite being released from the Packers active roster and spending the last ten weeks on their practice squad, former UTSA defensive tackle Brian Price has apparently garnered interest from multiple NFL teams in need of defensive line help, including the Indianapolis Colts.

In order to prevent Price from leaving Green Bay, his salary was increased to $26,470/week from the league minimum salary of $6,900/week.

Packers DT Brian Price is now making $26,470 per week on the practice squad, well above the regular weekly… https://t.co/ZaSlWGcU3t

Selection Day is finally upon us. We should know where UTSA and the rest of Conference USA’s bowl-eligible teams are headed later this afternoon, but here are our final projections to hold you over until then.

UTSA will officially unveil their bowl destination at approximately 1:45 p.m. today on Facebook Live.

There have already been a handful of bowl swaps that didn’t impact C-USA, but any swaps that might change the C-USA bowl picture would likely be between multiple ESPN-owned bowls.

Bowl games owned by ESPN

Armed Forces Bowl

Birmingham Bowl

Bahamas Bowl*

Boca Raton Bowl*

Camellia Bowl

Celebration Bowl

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl

Hawaiʻi Bowl*

Heart of Dallas Bowl*

Las Vegas Bowl

New Mexico Bowl*

St. Petersburg Bowl

Texas Bowl

*C-USA tie-in

Gildan New Mexico Bowl

Almost everyone is in agreement now that UTSA will be heading to Albuquerque for their first-ever bowl game, but you never know if ESPN will make a last-minute shift to try to create better match-ups elsewhere and send us to one of their other bowls.

Prediction: UTSA (6-6) vs. New Mexico (8-4)

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl

Multiple media outlets have now reported that the New Orleans Bowl will feature Southern Miss and Louisiana-Lafayette. Given the ODU to Hawaii Bowl announcement, I don’t see anything that would get in the way of this.

Prediction: Southern Miss (6-6) vs. Louisiana-Lafayette (6-6)

Boca Raton Bowl

Western Kentucky are your C-USA Champs and will be heading to Boca for some of that south Florida recruiting. I previously put UCF in the slot opposite WKU, but it looks like they will go elsewhere in-state to the Miami Beach Bowl, so Memphis is the consensus to fill in here.

Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl

This is where things start to get interesting. The Big 12 only has six bowl-eligible teams and this is their 7th slot, so I thought North Texas would be a shoo-in here given their proximity to the bowl. However, a report from Brett McMurphy at ESPN (who own this bowl, for what that’s worth) has a Big 12 team, likely Baylor, taking on Navy.

It seems reasonable that the Big 12 might try to dump their Cactus Bowl bid against a Mountain West opponent in favor of the Armed Forces Bowl against Navy, but the Cactus Bowl promises a very nice payout ($3.3 million last year) and it is owned by the Fiesta Bowl, not by ESPN, making the deal much more difficult to complete in such a short amount of time.

I’ve gone back and forth on this a few times, but it just makes so much more sense for all parties involved to have Louisiana Tech here and have the Big 12 retain their tie-in with the Cactus Bowl.

Zaxby’s Heart of Dallas Bowl

Louisiana Tech seemed like the obvious favorite for the Heart of Dallas Bowl for weeks now, but the aforementioned ESPN report has North Texas here against Army, and it makes sense for C-USA to go local with the Heart of Dallas since the Big Ten couldn’t provide a Power-Five opponent for us.

Prediction: North Texas (5-7) vs. Army (6-5, game vs. Navy remaining)

Motel 6 Cactus Bowl

With the Pac-12 unable to provide a team for the Cactus Bowl, their spot defaults to the backup Mountain West tie-in. Faced with the potential of matching up with a Group-of-Five opponent either way, perhaps the Big 12 worked a deal to keep their Armed Forces slot against a quality Navy team and give up Cactus to Louisiana Tech, but I just don’t see it happening with a non-ESPN bowl.